There was supposed to be a photo-tour of the city today, but as you can partially see in the picture it's been raining cats and dogsnearly all day today and big parts of the weekend. Hopefully we'll have some nicer days again soon. While I as a crocodile am not adverse to water, not all of my companions see it that way.

Some of the toyvoyagers here like to cook or tr new food and want to make some. Our host told us we could make something nice but we'd all have to help. We, that is all the tvs that arrived last week: Jelle, and TravelingTuffy and Crush who's been here for a while and I.
We looked through some books and magazines and decided on apricot tarts.
We got out the form and the ingredients.
We measured and added flour, sugar, eggs and butter for the dough.
Plus peeled a line for some more flavor.
We kneded the douhg (the Kitchen Aid did most of the work) and wrapped it to put in the fridge for half an hour.
We prepared the apricots by cutting them in half, taking out the stone and marinating them in orange liquor and powdered sugar. Actually one's supposed to take a special aprocit liquor, but we made do with what we had.
This too has to rest for half an hour.
Meanwhile we made the filling, preheated the oven and oiled the form.
Then we took out the dough and made the bottom.
We baked it for 15 min and then added the apricots
and the filling of eggs with powdered sugar.
We baked it for another 40 min and now have to wait for it to cool down before we can taste it.

We saw another part of Essen today, called Kray.
Here's the townhall:
It now houses a small sub-division of the library and some offices of course. There was a mayor just for Kray-Leithe, a town that mainly consisted of farms, until 1929. During the industrialization som of the farmland was sold for coal mining instead and there are still some of the old miner's neighborhoods and a few buildings of the mines, that are now used as dance clubs, for expositions or for private parties.
We walked some way and found this residential street. We had to highlight the colors because in the bright sunligt/shade the camera didn't display them very wel, so we now look extra bright.
And here's a football club where some boys are getting ready for training and where it can get loud on the weekends when there are games of the local leagues
.

I did not yet see a castle, but today I visited the old town of Hattingen. There are about 150 old half-timbered houses, dating back to the 16th century.
Here the modern ciy center merges with the old town:
This is part of the old town hall.

Lot's of the Ruhr area used to look like this but was "modernized and improved" in the 1960s and '70s, something the inhabitants of Hattingen prevented in their town.
This house is called Bügeleisenhaus (flat iron house).

Parts of the old city wall still surround the old town.

Some houses are hard to access. They are all very close together but usually not attached. There are even windows and stairs in these narrow alleys, or they are the only entrance to other houses.

The Kirchplatz (church square) is very well preserved in its original layout of houses that have a lower level that leads to the street
and one higher up that leads to the church place, where they surround the church in an oval form, with narrow stairs leading from the street to the church place between the buildings.

We visited the parrot park in Bochum today to get some new toys for the budgies.
There are some aras free in the middle of th shop area. They seemed friendly, but when we wanted to get closer to say "hi", this one wanted to get a bit too friendly for my taste, so I stayed at a save distace after that.
HEEELP!
I felt safer around these guys:
This one is a really pretty red and seemed very curious about foreign visitors.
He wanted to chat.

We enjoyed the view on the way back.
Former police headquaters
The convention center
On the Autobahn
Fields between the cities of the Ruhrgebiet
A newsstand with soccer magazines
Chocolate Müsli (cereal) anyone?

The budgies completely destroyed their old toy, so we as toyvoyagers were tasked with getting creative and making new ones for them. Here's the pack we bought yesterday:
This is what we got to work with:
The budgies love leather and aren't allowed any fibers.
Do you like it?

TravelingTuffy and I are helping prepare the food for a birthday party tomorrow. We have a lot of cooking planned.
First we are preparing a big pan of veggies is red wine sauce.
I had TravelingTuffy cut the onions, after all we didnt want any crocodile tears. Those puppy eyes are bad enough.
We put them into pan with olive oil and added egg plants, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers dried tomatoes... and let them simmer in red wine
Then we added fresh finely cut garlic, fresh herbs from the garden, chili powder, salt and pepper...
Now let it rest over night.

Next we made pork in orange sauce.
We washed and prepared the meat, and quickly sautéed all sides.
Next we prepared some more onions with pepper salt, chicken fond and some orange juice.
We poured it over the meat and put all into the microwave oven.

We also prepared turkey roulades. We cut turkey into thin layers.
Mixed dried tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger root and spices, spread that filling on the turkey meat and rolled it up.
We rolled them in spiced flour and put them into the pan to brown them from all sides.
In a casserole dish we added chicken fond, cream, coconut milk, red curry, a habanero pepper, lemon leaves and soy sauce.
Then it all went into the oven for half an hour.

For dessert we made tiramisu.
We spread out some Löffelbiskuit and dreanched it in espresso.
We prepared the cream with amaretto and raw eggs, spread it over the lower layer and put more Biskuit on top.
We added more espresso and put it all into the fridge over night.
Who wants to come for dinner tomorrow?

We went to the famer's market in Rüttenscheid. There are farmer's markets in many parts of the city, but we like the one in Rüttenscheid best because it had the largets choice of fresh vegetables, fruit and cheese.
We had to park quite some way away because many people think the same.
They had some very pretty flowers.
Here are rolls and bread from an organic bakery. There's always a long line here.
These wreaths are hung on the front door or put on the table as fall decoration.
The fountains is a sitting woman with kind of an umbrella with water dripping down. Luckly we haven't had any rain today. Behind it is an older house that has been renovated and kind of a winter garden added to the top floor.
There are also stands selling meat or fish.

We're still here and because TravelingTuffy likes to try out the candy of the world, out host unpacked some. Of course we other tvs were there at once and had to try some, too.
We started out with some swiss chocolate with 70% cacao, our host's current favourite. Jelle's favourite, too.

Personally, I prefered the sweeter kind. Here's a Butterkeks (butter cookie):
They come as regulars, whole wheat, with or without choclate cover and sometimes, as in this case, with a yoghurt cream. Yummy!

Swiss chocolate also come in variations, of course. Napolitains are small pieces, individually wrapped and often come in packs of different kinds:
Zartbitter/dark chocolate, Haselnuss/hazlenut, Milchschokolade/milk chocolate, and giandor(or a variation - a kind of chocolate/nut cream)

Here's Brause. It bubbles and prickles on the tongue. Ahoi is a favourite kind of that sweet here and these little bears come in coke, strawberry, banana or peach flavour.
There's also powder to dissolve in water, big chunks or other small forms with different flavours.

Maoam is another favourite brand. It's chewy candy in all kinds of forms now, regular or extra sour flavours (which should be "sauer" in German, but for some reason it says "sour" on the wrapper).

No list of favourite brands of candy would be complete without Haribo. Here we have their licorice mix, called Matador, but licorice is Lakritz in German.
There's salt licorice or other kinds in there. Here's the favourite licorice snail: Lakritzschnecke. It can be eaten like this or be unwound, or even separated into halfs before eating.
I'm stuffed!
I think I ate 10x my weight in candy today.